Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Correct mounting height for QS8's

Seems kinda high major for both the surrounds and sub. Are you running the receiver test tones and adjusting to around 75dB with an SPL meter?

was this using test tones on the reciever? Your surrounds had no sound coming from them compared to your other speakers?

the test tones from the receiver would come out fine...same volume as all of the others. It was when i put on a dvd that I noticed the lack of sound until I bumped it up by +10. Tried saving private ryan (gunfire, explsions, rain), Forest Gump (mainly for the rain scene), Incredibles - good to show off surrounds. It sounds good now. Last night noticed that the surrounds almost sounded too strong in certain situations, so I may end up backing it down now. Just thought it was strange that I had to play around (not sure if it was a receiver issue).

I would calibrate them equally with your test tones. The source material you are testing just doesn't have very loud surround sounds. The surrounds are suppose to enhance the movie watching experience by placing you 'in the action'. Generally, you should not be able to destinctly pinpoint sounds comming straight from your surrounds.

I think some people like to up the surrounds/ sub a little above calibration levels but I would not increase anything above the calibrated level by more than a couple of db at most.

Make sure your DVD player is outputting PCM if using an HDMI cable or 5.1/7.1 analog connections to your reciver. If you are using an optical Toshlink or digital coaxial audio connection, then make sure you are NOT using PCM in the player, but rather set it to bitstream. If this is not set right, then you will not get the correct surround and sub output. Hopefully your receiver has an indicator to confirm if it is decoding the correct multi-channel signal.

can you not have it set to bitstream with hdmi?

Major,

The test tones are what you want to use when calibrating your system.

I would suggest calibrating all your speakers to sound the same with your test tones, then throw in Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the rings and the first 30 minutes of that movie has some great surround effects, especially bilbo's party with the fireworks.

You are right, you can. The important thing is just to make sure the receiver indicates it is decoding the signal properly. Just be sure you aren't using PCM with optical or coaxial.

Sorry, my mind has been clouded by the HD-DVD/Bluray discussions on Dolby True HD and DTS-HR/Master Audio. In which case many need to use PCM over HDMI unless they have a reciever and player combination that supports it.

Major,

If you are mostly having trouble hearing ambient background sounds like rain and wind you might be having the same problem I had with the background noise of my appliances was drowning out the more subtle sound on movies. If you turn up the surrounds to make up for this other more intense sounds will be way to loud. Not sure if you have any control over background noise but if you can tame it some it will help everything sound better.

I’ve also noticed that many movie soundtracks are mixed differently with various channels at different volumes when switching from movie to movie. For one of the Matrix movies I had to turn up the center channel about 3db just hear it over the mains. I second Hutzal’s suggestion to test your system with “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring,” many good scenes throughout the movie. One I particularly like to use are the scenes in the Mines of Moria. Very cool echoes for the surrounds and nice bass when fighting the Balrog.

I generally leave my surrounds turned up about 3db above calibration levels for movies and about 5db for most games, sometimes a little more or less depending on the source. For my favorite movies/games I keep 3x5 cards in the case with the speaker level settings for that movie/game. This may sound excessive but found it necessary to avoid having to recalibrate by Buttkicker for each movie. As an added benefit I also started tracking the other speaker level settings.

In the end the best thing about home theater is that you can do whatever works best for you.

Dean

That's a good idea with the index cards.